Guidelines that should be observed for interoperability between various devices in a home/office have been established, the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standardization for authenticating whether the guidelines are observed has been in progress. The DLNA provides for interoperability between a diversity of devices such as digital AV devices or personal computers which are connected to one another over a home network, so that content including music, videos or still images may be shared between the devices in the home network.
DLNA-authenticated devices in a home network would be at interoperability over a wired/wireless network. In other words, the DLNA enables home appliances, PCs, wireless devices, or other digital devices to be connected to one another via a wired/wireless home network based on UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), so that the devices may share content.
Such nature of the DLNA enables DLNA-authenticated terminals to share content. In order to search for content stored in one or more DLNA-authenticated terminals having a storage area, a character-based inquiry word is transmitted to the terminals, and each terminal looks up content similar to the inquiry word and shares the corresponding content with the other DLNA-authenticated devices via the home network.
Meanwhile, as a type of digital convergence, IPTV that may provide various types of content such as information, video, music, or broadcast through a high-speed Internet network, has been commercialized. A user may watch only programs he desires to at his convenient time, may directly play back content stored in his various portable terminals, e.g., a smartphone, or may replay audios or videos streamed from a server over the Internet.
As described above, the amount of content users may access has been drastically increased, and content happened to be shared between devices via DLNA so that content may be played back by the devices no matter what devices they are. Accordingly, users need more convenient and efficient content management.
Presently, as a representative application, which provides information on digital broadcast programs while enabling broadcast programs to be viewed or reserved for recording, the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) is used. The EPG information includes information for guiding various programs that are to be on air via IPTV or cable broadcast or digital terrestrial broadcast and provides for the functions of helping viewers to choose programs or of displaying information on the programs selected or reserved by users.
However, the conventional EPG is dedicated to digital terrestrial broadcast, IPTV or cable TV broadcast services, and thus, only provides per-channel broadcast information of the terrestrial broadcast, cable TV or IPTV. Thus, replay, recording, or reserved viewing of various types of content connected via DLNA or wired/wireless network might not be managed by the EPG. Accordingly, content provided through digital terrestrial broadcast or IPTV or cable TV services is managed by the EPG provided by the corresponding service while other various types of content need to be separately managed for replay, recording, or reservation, thus resulting in users' inconvenience.